| inbluevt | Date: Tuesday, 2013/09/10, 11:55 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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As the battle for Aleppo drags on, Kurdish Syrian women are distinguishing themselves as fierce warriors on the front lines. Emma Beals reports.
Cracks of sniper fire and the thud of artillery echo around the deserted neighborhood. Dressed in a bright purple top, tight jeans, and a bohemian headband, Delar, a young Kurdish Syrian woman, brandishes her AK-47 like a seasoned soldier, clipping in the magazine and taking aim.
At the heart of the embattled Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo in northern Syria, Delar, 22, is an unusual sight on the front lines—a woman fighting alongside the men against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
“There is no difference between women and the guys here. I learn to fight, and they learn to cook,” says Delar, who fights with the female branch of the Kurdish YPG army. Unusual for this part of Syria, neither Delar nor her female commanders wear hijabs on the front lines.
The YPG, or the People's Protection Units, is the militant arm of the Kurdish Supreme Committee. During the ongoing Syrian civil war, it has fought regime forces in the northeastern corner of Syria and in pockets of Kurdish control in Aleppo and the surrounding areas.
Despite 20 percent of the Kurdish militant group being female, it is still unusual for women to pick up arms in Syria, Delar says: “There's a huge difference between women's rights in FSA territory and Kurdish territory. When fighting with Kurds, they respect me first as a human, then as a woman, then as a fighter.”
The YPG has a long history of recruiting female fighters and training both men and women in rigorous military schools like the one in Afrin, near Turkey, where Delar learned to fight.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Wednesday, 2013/09/11, 0:01 AM |
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